Top Gun has endured mostly as a kitsch object, an antique of superficial patriotism and ’80s excess. It was popcorn propaganda with all the depth and soul of a Pepsi commercial. Navy, that movie was a glorified (and quite successful) recruitment ad propped up by the slick craft of its director, the late Tony Scott, and by the sweat-slicked faces and bodies of its cast. Made with the cooperation and final script approval of the U.S.
It’s a tad amusing, seeing such hushed reverence applied to Top Gun, of all box-office sensations. Image used with permission by copyright holder This is a movie deeply in love with its title character, and with the movie star reprising that role, and maybe even with the fantasy of America it’s reviving. Early in the film, Cruise whips a tarp off that old motorcycle, the one he rode around back in ’86, and the moment is so glowingly awestruck, you half expect it to be accompanied by a 21-gun salute. Yet there’s scarcely a hint of irony in Top Gun: Maverick, a decades-later follow-up to one of the most anomalous hits of the 1980s. Those kind of winks are common in so-called legacy sequels, a very self-conscious strain of modern franchise continuation. But he’s also speaking, in a metatextual manner, about the legend playing this legend: Hollywood’s aging but ageless golden boy Tom Cruise, pushing 60 but still climbing into cockpits at a time when his “kind” - the movie star who’s a draw no matter the movie - has indeed been added to the endangered species list.
The admiral is talking about the obsolescence of fighter pilots in an age when bombs are dropped remotely from a strip mall outside Las Vegas. “Your kind is headed for extinction,” he tells the one and only Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. Chester “Hammer” Cain (Ed Harris) does not mince words. Faced with the cockiest flyboy in the history of naval aviation, Rear Adm.
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